Valoranthas taken strides to establish itself as a competitor in the hero shooter market. While hype for the game is not quite as high as its first release, it still has a dedicated playerbase and group of streamers. The game continues to update itself as well, withValorant’s next patch promising to address stream snipers, among other things.
Valorant’s arrival on the scene was a bit sudden, and it has been cleaned up significantly since players got their hands on it. The gameplay, which has been accurately compared toCS:GOwith some extra flavor in the form of individual hero abilities, has drawn its share of pro and casual players. The individual powers mean certain characters have become greatly favor over others thanks to favorable interactions with weapons or other characters. Viper, who uses poison abilities, has been at the bottom of this tier list for some time, but a recent discovery might change that for a while.
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InValorant’s Bind map, there are two teleporters. One on A side lets players hop over into B side, while the one in B side on the opposite end lets players loop around back to the opposite end of A side. One intrepid player discovered an exploit with one of Viper’s abilities, her Toxin Screen, and how it interacts with the A to B teleporter. When deployed, the Screen will extend into the teleporter and then much farther than it is supposed to. The result is a Toxin Screen that cuts the whole map in half at a diagonal. This also causes the Toxin Screen to extend past a solid wall, similar tothe wall phasing bug discovered inValorantnot long ago.
Note that although regularguns can fire through walls inValorant, to varying degrees of sucess, Toxin Screen is something different. The way the ability actually works is that Viper deploys a series of small canisters in a line, which then emit poison to form a dense wall. It should not phase through walls or extend so far from the teleporter, but it does. The reason seems to be that the ability is re-deployed in its entirety from the teleporter. For other projectiles this makes sense, as the projectile is destroyed on one end and recreated on the other. For the Toxin Screen however, this simply results in a very long wall of poison.
While it’s uncertain how long this exploit will stick around, it will no doubt make Viper a bit more valuable in Bait for some time. Viper has been at the bottom of the tier list for a while, but this one interaction makes her a better pick thanks to the extra long, obscuring, damaging wall. It’s a bit tragic that it took an exploit for Viper to rise in power, whenSage and Killjoy also got a major power boost from a bugrecently. As if being the highest tier and newest characters was not enough for their popularity.
Still, in the most recentValorantupdate both Sage and Killjoy were nerfed. Perhaps Viper will see some buffs soon, in the same manner of Breach. Until then, this exploit might warrant further experimentation. Other abilities might be able to re-deploy in interesting ways as well.
